Obama's Biggest Disagreement With The Founders: Transform America or Restore It?

Barack Obama famously spoke of "fundamentally transforming" America.

But what exactly does that mean?

And why does that vision stand in direct contrast to the principles established by America's Founders?

In this episode of The Right Side, Doug Billings explores one of the most important philosophical debates in modern American politics. Is America fundamentally broken and in need of transformation? Or is America fundamentally good and in need of restoration?

The Founders were not perfect men. They never claimed to be. But they established principles that proved powerful enough to inspire Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and generations of Americans who worked to bring the nation closer to its ideals.

America's greatest achievements didn't come from abandoning its founding principles. They came from returning to them.

Join Doug Billings as he examines the difference between transformation and remembrance, and why the future of the Republic may depend upon understanding that distinction.

The Right Side with Doug Billings

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

The right side with Doug Billings. Hello, America. Hello, world. Welcome to the right side. I'm Doug Billings. You know, my friends, every once in a while, a politician says something that reveals a lot more than what people realize at the time. Most political speeches are forget are forgettable, right? Most campaign slogans disappear just as quickly as they arrive. But every now and then, a phrase survives because it captures something much deeper than a moment. And years ago, you may recall this, Barack Obama, during one of his campaigns, told America that the country needed to be fundamentally transformed. Really? The minute I heard that, the second I heard that, fundamentally transformed. I've been thinking about that phrase, uh, especially after yesterday, during the opening of the Obama presidential library and uh and center. You know, the renewed discussion he brought up himself. Obama can't help himself. He continually, in any speech he gives, usually, in some form or fashion, will disparage the founding fathers and America itself. So yesterday, during the discussions about America's founders, slavery, and the meaning of our history, Obama was at it again. But I don't think that the most important question is whether, you know, you like Obama or not. I don't think the most important question is whether you voted for him. I think the most important question is this. What the hell did he mean? What exactly was America supposed to be transformed from? And what exactly was it supposed to be transformed into? One of the mistakes people make in politics is assuming every disagreement is about policy. Most of them aren't. Most of the disagreements in politics are about something much deeper. They're disagreements about how people see the world, all right? They're disagreements about human nature, disagreements about history, disagreements about America itself. And I think that's where the real divide in this country exists. It's not between Republican and commute socialists, formerly known as Democrats. It's not between conservatives and liberals. It's between two competing visions of America. One vision sees America primarily through the lens of its failures. The other sees America through the lens of its principles. And before anybody gets upset at that, let's acknowledge something. It's obvious. America has failures. Of course it does. Every nation does, every civilization does, every human being has failures. It's perfection that's the question. Because look, if perfection is the standard, nobody survives that test, folks. Not me. If God were to come down and say, excuse me, let's form a line. Everybody who's made a mistake, let's get in line, please. Doug Billings would be first in that line. So if perfection is the standard, nobody survives. Not you, not me, not the founders, not America, not any nation on earth. The question isn't whether America was perfect. The question is whether America was founded upon principles that were true. There's a huge difference between those two things. And, you know, I think a lot of Americans hear criticism of the founders and they immediately become defensive. I don't necessarily become defensive. I think honest history is important. The founders, all 56 of them, were imperfect men. Some of them owned slaves, some of them made compromises that we would find deeply troubling today, okay? Some had personal flaws, some had political blind spots. None of that surprises me. Why would it? And why would it matter? The founders were human beings. What interests me, it's not their imperfections. What interests me is what they created despite their imperfections. Think about the world that they lived in. Okay, imagine yourself back then. The years 18 uh 1787. Okay. 1787, there are no examples of large constitutional republics successfully governing themselves. And you know, the prevailing model at the time throughout history was a monarchy. Kings, empires, strongmen, aristocracies. The idea that ordinary people, citizens, could govern themselves, that was a radical idea at the time. It was dangerous. Most people thought it was impossible. And yet, we've got a group of 56 men who gathered in Philadelphia and attempted something the world had never seen. Not perfection, possibility. All right. That's an important distinction. Because today, you know, the modern critics out there, they'll talk a lot about the founders as though they were sitting in air-conditioned conference rooms with access to 200 years of hindsight. But they weren't. They were trying to solve problems in real time. Again, imagine yourself in that room. The revolution had just been won, barely, right? The country is fragile. The states don't trust each other. The economy is unstable. You got foreign powers that are just waiting in the wings for the American experiment to fail so that they could swoop back in. And now you're trying to convince 13 very different states to unite under a single constitutional system. That wasn't easy. And it wasn't guaranteed. It wasn't even anywhere close to being inevitable. It was extraordinary, really. And it was historical. Here's where the slavery discussion becomes important, too, folks, because every Juneteenth, you know, we hear some version of the same argument. You know, Doug, if the founders really believed that freedom was real, why didn't they abolish slavery immediately? Just get it done right then and there. They should have done. Well, all right. On one level, that's a fair question. And let me tackle it. But it's also a question that deserves an honest answer, okay? So the answer is not that slavery was good. The answer isn't that slavery was justified. And the answer is not that the founders were indifferent. The answer is that they were attempting to hold together a nation that might have never existed without compromise. Now, I know some people out there hear the word compromise and they immediately recoil back because they think that it somehow it equals weakness. But compromise is not the same thing as approval, all right? Sometimes compromise is what allows progress to happen. Think about it in your own life. Every marriage involves compromise, every business partnership involves compromise, every political system involves compromise. The question is whether the compromise serves a larger purpose. And in the case of the Constitution, the larger purpose was the creation of a republic built upon principles that could outlive the generation that created it. That's what many of the modern critics miss. The founders didn't claim to have achieved perfection, they claimed to have identified truths. And those truths become incredibly powerful. And they did. They became very, very powerful over time. Look, when Thomas Jefferson wrote, All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, Jefferson created a problem, a massive problem. Because once those words existed, future generations could hold America accountable to the words. The declaration became a measuring stick, a standard, a promise. And over time, that promise became impossible to ignore. Think about Frederick Douglass. Mr. Douglas experienced slavery firsthand. If anybody had reason to reject the founders outright, it would have been him. But he repeatedly appealed to the principles of the Declaration. The principles of it. Now, why did he do that? Because he understood something very profound. The principles aren't the problem. The failure to apply them consistently was the problem. That's a very different argument to make. The same thing happened with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When King stood in front of the nation and delivered the I Have a Dream speech, he didn't call for America to abandon its founding ideas. He called for America to honor them. And he described the Declaration and the Constitution as a promissory note that had not yet been redeemed. And again, notice the distinction. King wasn't saying the principles were wrong. He was saying America had fallen short of them. And that brings us back to Barack Obama. All right, because I think that this is where the philosophical divide becomes real. When I listen to Obama speak about America, I often hear a guy who views the nation's failures as evidence that the system itself requires transformation. When I study the founders, I see 56 men who believed the principles were correct, even when people failed to live up to them. That's a completely different way of understanding history. One approach says America is fundamentally flawed, evil, founded in sin. The other says that America is fundamentally good, but imperfectly practiced. One approach seeks transformation, the other seeks restoration. And that's not just a political argument, folks. That's a civilizational argument. Because how a nation interprets its past determines how it approaches its future. If you believe America is fundamentally broken, you'll spend your life trying to replace it. If you believe that America possesses enduring principles worth preserving, you'll spend your life trying to restore fidelity to those principles. That's why this debate matters. It's not really about Obama. It's not really about the founders. It's not really about Juneteenth. It's about whether America's greatest strength lies in its ability to reinvent itself or to rediscover itself. Personally, I believe the answer is obvious. America's greatest moments have never happened when we give up on our founding principles. They've happened when we return to them. The abolition movement returned to them. The civil rights movement returned to them. Religious liberty returned to them. Free speech returned to them. Equal protection under the law returned us to the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution. Again and again, the story's the same. America improves when America rediscovers truth. The truths that were there all along. So that's why I reject the idea that America needs fundamental transformation. Uh-uh. It's the most anti-American thing you can say, by the way. And the idea that an American president said it is astonishing. What America needs is something much more difficult. America needs remembrance. We need to remember who we are, and we need to remember what the founders actually built. And we need to remember why liberty matters. We need to remember why limited government matters. We need to remember why rights come from God rather than government. And we need to remember that imperfect people can still establish enduring truths. Because that's exactly what happened in Philadelphia in 1787. The founders were not perfect. They never claimed to be, but the principles that they articulated were powerful enough to eventually challenge slavery, to defeat segregation, to expand liberty, and to create the most successful constitutional republic in human history. So, folks, that's not a story of failure. That's a story of progress anchored in truth. And maybe that's the most important lesson of all now that you think about it. America's greatest have, you know, greatest moments have never depended on perfect people. They've depended on true principles. And when we remember them, we flourish. When we forget them, we drift. And when we rediscover them, renewal becomes possible. And that's the great reawakening and the renewal that we're seeing all around us today. That's why I personally am optimistic. Because despite all of the noise, despite all the division, despite all of the attempts to convince Americans that their history is somehow something to be ashamed of, I still believe that the American people understand something profound. That the country is worth preserving, that its principles are worth defending. Look, this is a story worth telling honestly, folks, and its future is worth fighting for. That's where I stand on it. Please like and share and follow and subscribe. Head over to DougBillings.us. Please prayerfully consider donating to the program over there. And until next time, as always, ladies and gentlemen, God bless you. God bless your families. God bless the United States of America. We are in this together. Believe it. For the Republic. Cheers. The right side with Doug Billings.